Abstract [en]

The focus of this article is children's positioning and agency in a Swedish school class. Drawing on ethnographic data generated during a year-long field study, the actions of three different children are used by the researcher to illustrate how children position themselves and are positioned by others. Using the concept of professional pupils and child, the article in particular explores children's agency and the possibility for children to position themselves as agentic. In the article, two of the children are shown to strive to position themselves as professional pupils, and it is shown that this positioning is not available to the children unless their teacher accepts and reinforces it. The third child is understood to actively aspire to the position of child, with the connotations this entails of being immature, incompetent and uncontrolled, showing that agentic positioning does not necessarily entail a show of competence.